“The Montreal Symphony Orchestra has unveiled its $4 million pipe organ at the Maison symphonique, joining the ranks of North American orchestras installing the king of instruments in their concert halls during the past two decades,” writes Barbara Jepson in Thursday’s (6/4) Wall Street Journal. The organ by Casavant Frères—also responsible for the 5,548-pipe organ at Kansas City’s Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, among others—is “an imposing instrument with 83 stops (types of sounds) and 6,489 pipes…. But the organ’s highest achievement is how beautifully it blends into the aural fabric of the orchestra and … how well it sounds in the pleasingly reverberant 1,900-seat hall.” Inaugural works performed on the organ included Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Camille Saint-Saens’s Organ Symphony, and new works by Kaija Saariaho and Samy Moussa. The organ is “the focal point of the $261 million Maison symphonique, designed by A.J. Diamond of Diamond Schmitt Architects in conjunction with AEdifica and other associates.… Pipe organs form a compelling backdrop to concert halls, but to be worth their price tags they must work on a musical and practical level. The Pierre-Béique does that and more.” To read Symphony magazine’s article in the Spring 2012 issue about concert-hall organs, click here.
Posted June 6, 2014
